Yahara Canopy Project

Yahara Canopy Project Grant

The UTA received funding through a 2016 DNR Urban Forestry Grant to launch the Yahara Canopy Project. The Yahara Canopy Project is a multi-faceted program that analyzed relationships between the urban canopy and watershed and developed pilot planting projects intended to enhance the water quality benefits of our trees. We also created urban forest canopy models with a suite of programs available through I-Tree, a public urban forestry software. In particular, we ran the I-Tree Canopy and I-Tree Hydro models at multiple scales in the Madison Metro area. The results we generated by a kind of citizen-based science that incorporates local professional academic input with reproducible hydrologic models. By looking closely at the relationships between our water and trees, we hope to attach value to the benefits of the canopy. The results from the urban watershed analysis can be found here: